World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: The Ice-Cold Hand

By last week the Russians' multiple winter drives, begun last November
as a series of local counteroffensives, had developed into one of the
great offensives of history.* From Leningrad to the Black Sea, along a
1,500-mile front (see map), the Red Army was staging one operation with
one purpose: to break the German hold upon Russia at every point where
the Wehrmacht had anchored its lines, then to smash into and destroy
the rear systems of communication and supply, without which the Germans
cannot recover in the spring.